


Adagietto

by helsinkibaby



Category: Stargate SG-1
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2002-07-20
Updated: 2002-07-20
Packaged: 2017-12-20 20:16:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/891407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/helsinkibaby/pseuds/helsinkibaby
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>"Listening to him play was one of the things that you most loved to do, because you could lose yourself in the music and you didn't have to think about what was bothering you." </i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Adagietto

It was never a piece of music that you liked, nor even one that you'd heard of. Classical music bored you, Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, all those dead European masters put you straight to sleep, no matter how often your father tried to instil in you a love of all things classical. The only classics you were interested in were cars and motorcycles, and you and Mark could spend hours talking about them, trying to fix them, with him good-naturedly complaining when you could find a problem and fix it faster than he could. Dad would sometimes grumble about the tomboy that he was raising, but you could tell from the look on his face, from the sound of his voice, that he was proud of you all the same. 

Except he would keep going on about how you should appreciate classical music more. 

So you listened, and you grew to know the names, the terminology. You could tell a symphony from a concerto and both from a sonata. You knew the big ones, the ones that everyone knew, _Moonlight Sonata_ , the _William Tell Overture_ , Beethoven's Fifth, _Romeo and Juliet_ , by both Prokofiev and Tchiakovsky, and you preferred the Prokofiev. The only Shostakovich you knew was _The Young Lady and the Hooligan_ , because your father played it continuously for the three months you dated Jimmy Hogan at sixteen, and you pretended not to know the name of it while cursing him behind his back. 

But you never knew Mahler. 

The first time you remembered hearing that music was when you were at Janet and Cassie's house one night, having one of your traditional girly nights. One of her friends had got Cassie hooked on figure skating, hadn't been able to believe that Cassie didn't know more about the sport, her being from Toronto and all, and didn't she know that Canada had some of the best skaters in the world? The same friend had been lending Cassie books and video tapes to redress this grievous deficit in her education, and she'd been watching one of them that night, and almost against your wills, you and Janet found yourselves being sucked into watching it too.

But this wasn't any show you quickly realised; after all, that's what drew you in in the first place. It wasn't a competition, where Cassie ended up screaming at the judges after they shafted her favourite skaters. And it wasn't one of those shows that pretended to be a competition where everybody got high marks no matter how they skated, and the spotlights made it all look cheap and tacky. This was a genuine show, a spectacle. 

A show with a theme. 

The story unfolded right from the start, when the young woman with the Russian accent welcoming you, thanking you for sharing this night, _his_ night, with her and all her friends. And those same friends, those skaters with gold medals galore, who made more money in one night of skating than you did in one month of off-world missions spoke about the man that they'd come to honour. They'd told you what a good friend he was, how loyal, how caring, how honest. They'd spoken of how much he loved her, how much he loved their daughter. How they were the perfect couple. How much everyone missed him. 

There had been clips of the two of them skating together from all through their careers, start to finish. One clip showed a tiny girl who was allegedly thirteen but who looked eight, skating beside a taller boy, a couple of years older. His arm was stretched out shoulder high, and the little girl could skate right underneath it. More clips followed, the girl growing up into a beautiful woman, the boy growing up into a handsome man with warm eyes and a crooked smile. The love that they shared when they skated was obvious to you, the way they looked at each other, the way they smiled at each other. 

You knew right then and there that you'd give anything to have a man who looked at you like that. 

Then you realised that you did. 

And when the clips told the end of the story, about the practice where he didn't perform the lift that he was supposed to, about how he lay down on the ice in her arms, closed his eyes and never opened them again, you couldn't imagine how that must have felt for her. To have someone like that, to spend every waking hour with them, to know them as well as you knew yourself, maybe even better, then to have them go away…

You wanted to cry for her. 

And when she came out to skate on her own for the first time ever, looking so fragile, so small, and above all, so, so alone, that's just what you did. 

When the music started, the fourth movement of Mahler's Symphony Number 5, _Adagietto_ , you didn't know what it was. But you could see the story that she was telling, how she mimed skating with him, before stopping, covering her eyes and looking for him, running frantically around the ice. When she kneeled down, as if in tears, before leaning over and kissing the ice, Janet nudged you with the tissue box, and you extracted several before passing it on to Cassie. And when the woman on the screen began jumping and spinning, even smiling, you were in shock through your tears, because you couldn't imagine being that strong. 

You sobbed all the way through the performance, and afterwards, when you saw her cry too. When the three year old with her daddy's face patted her back, as if to console her. When you saw the faces of the other skaters as they watched backstage. At the end of the show, after the finale, when she made a speech, telling you to love one another, to find happiness in every day, that each day, you should say that you loved the person who lived with you, that it was so great. You, the consummate soldier, a soldier's daughter yet, who could count on the fingers of one hand the times you'd cried in the last five years. 

You left Janet's that night, but you didn't go home, not to your house at any rate. You went to his place and you hoped that he'd be there, that he'd be there alone, and you thanked God when he was. And he was shocked when he saw your red eyes and your blotchy face and he thought that something was seriously wrong. He took you in his arms and he held you, and he took you into his home and he gave you hot chocolate and he let you tell him all about the skater and her loss and the music and the story, and he didn't smile or make fun of you because you were affected like this by the story of someone that you'd never met, nor even heard of before that night. 

You told him the name of the piece that she'd skated to, and he smiled, telling you that he knew it. He went over to the piano and began to play it, and you'd almost cried again at the sheer memory. The only way you'd been able to stop yourself was by concentrating on him. So you stared at his fingers, the way that they danced over the keys, the touch so gentle, almost a caress, and you remembered how those fingers felt when they danced over your skin. And you looked at his face, so caught up in concentration, in the music, in what he was doing, and you couldn't stop thinking of all the times that you'd seen him look like that before, at the SGC, off-world, or when he was looking at you. Listening to him play was one of the things that you most loved to do, because you could lose yourself in the music and you didn't have to think about what was bothering you. 

You could lose yourself in him. 

And when he finished playing that night, he took you to his bed and later on, when you were lying in his arms and you were almost asleep, his fingers tapping a rhythm on your bare shoulders as a lullaby, he began to speak. He told you the other story behind that piece of music, that Mahler had been in love with a woman but had been scared to ask her to marry him. So he'd composed that piece of music and given it to her, and that had been his proposal. He didn't say a thing; he hadn't had to, because she knew, and she understood. 

You'd forgotten all about that story until one night, months later. You'd had a long day, testing some contraption or other that wasn't doing what it was supposed to do, and you had _not_ been in a good mood. You'd gone to his place and vented to your heart's content, never noticing that he was quieter than normal, that he seemed to have something on his mind. And you'd eaten your dinner and you'd had a glass of wine, and you were relaxing on the couch when you realised how out of sorts he was. You'd asked him if anything was wrong, and he'd said that he had something to say to you. You looked at him, waiting, expectantly at first, then curiously when he'd stood up, gone to the piano. 

It took a minute for you to recognise the music, and even then, the only thing that tipped you off was the mind's eye image of a woman spinning in a bluish-grey dress. And then you remembered the music, remembered the story that he'd told you, and tears had come to your eyes, a lump to your throat and you couldn't take your eyes off him. 

He didn't say a thing; he hadn't had to, because you knew, and you understood. 

And now you're sitting here, on the same couch that you sat on that night, and the sound of Mahler fills the room, and tears are in your eyes and a lump is in your throat, but for a different reason. 

Because the music is from a compact disc, and the piano seat is empty. His fingers aren't flying across the ivory, nor across your skin, nor will they ever again. And you're thinking about the woman again, about how she lost the man that she loved, about how she'd spent every day with him for so long, about how she knew him as well as she knew herself, maybe better. And you're remembering how you didn't understand months ago how she was able to go on, how she was able to live without him, without their love, and now you still don't understand, because you understand better now. Because now you know what it's like to have a love like that, to lose a love like that, and you don't know how you're going to go on. You don't know how she could find the strength, because you don't know how you're going to. And you never dreamed that it could be this hard, or hurt this much. 

You know you're going to be okay, just like she was. Because you have good friends, just like she had. And you have good memories, just like she had. Memories of kind blue eyes, and a smiling face, of hands on your skin and lips on yours. You'll get up in the morning and you'll face a new day, and because time's a great healer, it'll get a little bit easier every day. 

And one of these days you'll be able to listen to Mahler without wishing that he was here. Without imagining that he is and he's playing just for you. You'll be able to listen to the music without remembering the tears of a woman you've never met, but whose pain is your pain now too. 

But for tonight, you have Mahler and your memories. And you sit on his couch, the smooth metal frames of his glasses in your hand, and you close your eyes and turn up the volume, trying to lose yourself in the music. Because if you try very hard, you can almost believe that he's here too. 

And you can almost pretend that that's enough.


End file.
